BEAU GESTE / Walter Wanger 1926 signed contract regarding actor Ronald Colman

Description: Description: This auction is for an original 1926 Walter Wanger signed production contract between Samuel Goldwyn Inc. and Famous Players-Lasky Corporation. This contract is in connection to the services of actor Ronald Colman in the 1926 film titled BEAU GESTE. This contract is hand signed on the bottom of the last page by Walter Wanger, general manager of the production department at Famous Players-Lasky Corporation. The Samuel Goldwyn signature is in pencil. This contract includes the 2 pages shown in the photos above. If requested I will provide the document's measurements. Please view all of the pictures above carefully. More Information: Walter Wanger (born Walter Feuchtwanger; July 11, 1894 – November 18, 1968) was an American film producer active from the 1910s, his career concluding with the turbulent production of Cleopatra, his last film, in 1963. He began at Paramount Pictures in the 1920s and eventually worked at virtually every major studio as either a contract producer or an independent. He also served as President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 1939 to October 1941 and from December 1941 to 1945. Strongly influenced by European films, Wanger developed a reputation as an intellectual and a socially conscious movie executive who produced provocative message movies and glittering romantic melodramas. He achieved notoriety when, in 1951, he shot and wounded the agent of his then-wife, Joan Bennett, because he suspected they were having an affair. He was convicted of the crime and served a four-month sentence, then returned to making movies. After his death, his production company, Walter Wanger Productions, was sold to and absorbed by Time-Life Films, which also acquired many films produced by him and that company. Wanger was born Walter Feuchtwanger in San Francisco. He was the son of Stella (Stettheimer) and Sigmund Feuchtwanger, who were from German Jewish families that had emigrated to the United States in the nineteenth century. Wanger was from a non-observant Jewish family, and in later life attended Episcopalian services with his wife. In order to assimilate into American society, his mother altered the family name simply to Wanger in 1908. The Wangers were well-connected and upper middle class, something which later differentiated Wanger from the other Jewish film moguls who came from more ordinary backgrounds. Wanger attended Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, where he developed an interest in amateur theatre. After leaving Dartmouth, Wanger became a professional theatrical producer in New York City where he worked with figures such as the influential British manager Harley Granville-Barker and the Russian actress Alla Nazimova. Following the American entry into World War I in 1917, Wanger served with the United States Army in Italy initially in the Signal Corps where he worked as a pilot on reconnaissance missions, and later in propaganda operations directed at the Italian public. It was during this period that Wanger first came into contact with filmmaking. In April 1918 Wanger was transferred to the Committee on Public Information, and joined an effort to combat anti-war or pro-German sentiment in Allied Italy. This was partly accomplished through a series of short propaganda films screened in Italian cinemas promoting democracy and Allied war aims. After the Allied victory, Wanger returned to the United States in 1919 and was discharged from the army. Wanger married silent film actress Justine Johnstone in 1919. He initially returned to theatre production, before a chance meeting with film producer Jesse Lasky drew him into the world of commercial filmmaking. Lasky was impressed with Wanger's ideas and his experiences in the theatre, and hired him to head a New York office vetting and acquiring books and plays for use as film stories for Famous Players-Lasky (later to become Paramount), which was then the largest film production company in the world. Wanger's job at Paramount was to help meet the studio's large annual requirement for fresh stories. One of Wanger's major successes in his early years with the company was his identification of the British novel The Sheik as a story with potential. In 1921 it was turned into an extremely successful film starring Rudolph Valentino. The film helped establish the popularity of the Orientalist genre, which Wanger returned to a number of times during his career. By 1921, Wanger was unhappy with the terms he was receiving and left his job with Paramount. He travelled to Britain where he worked as a prominent cinema and theatre manager until 1924. While on a visit to London, Paramount key founder Jesse Lasky offered to appoint him as "general manager of production" on improved terms and Wanger accepted. Wanger's second spell with Paramount lasted from 1924 to 1931, during which time his annual wage rose from $150,000 to $250,000. He was tasked with overseeing the work of the studio heads, which meant he had little involvement with the production of individual films. Because he was based in New York, Wanger worked more closely with the company's Astoria Studios in Queens. A rivalry developed between Wanger-influenced Astoria productions and those of B.P. Schulberg who ran the Paramount productions in Hollywood. From the mid-1920s, the company was rapidly overtaken by the recently formed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as the industry's leading company and this along with heavy losses incurred on big-budget films, led to Paramount's executives decision in 1927 to eventually close the New York operation and shift all production to Hollywood. Wanger opposed this move and felt he was being squeezed out of the company. In 1926, Warner Brothers premièred Don Juan, a film with music and sound effects, and the following year released The Jazz Singer with dialogue and singing scenes. Along with other big companies, Paramount initially resisted adopting sound films and continued to exclusively make silent ones. Wanger convinced his colleagues of the importance of sound, and personally oversaw the conversion of 1928 silent baseball film Warming Up to sound. The sound version had synchronized music and sound effects without dialogue. After the film's successful release, the company switched dramatically away from silent to sound. After being closed for a year, the Astoria Studios were re-opened in 1929 to make sound films, taking advantage of their close proximity to Broadway where many actors were recruited to appear in early Talkies. Wanger recruited large numbers of new performers including Maurice Chevalier, the Marx Brothers, Claudette Colbert, Jeanette MacDonald, Fredric March and Miriam Hopkins and directors such as George Cukor and Rouben Mamoulian. Wanger's New York films were often adapted from stage plays and focused on sophisticated comedies, often with European settings, while Schulberg concentrated on more populist stories in Hollywood. As the effects of the Great Depression hit the film industry in the early 1930s, the Astoria Studios increasingly struggled to produce box office hits, and in December 1931 it was closed down again. Wanger had been informed that his contract would not be renewed, and he had already left the company. After leaving Paramount, Wanger tried unsuccessfully to set himself up as an independent. Unable to secure financing for films, he joined Columbia Pictures in December 1931. Wanger was recruited by Harry Cohn, the studio's co-founder, who wanted to move Columbia away from its Poverty Row past by producing several special, large-budget productions each year to complement the bulk of the studio's low-budget films. Wanger was to take on a greater personal role in individual films than he had previously, although he always attempted to give directors and screenwriters creative freedom. In general his efforts were overshadowed by the more successful films made by Frank Capra for the studio. Wanger was given an Honorary Academy Award in 1946 for his six years service as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He refused another honorary Oscar in 1949 for Joan of Arc, out of anger over the fact that the film, which he felt was one of his best, had not been nominated for Best Picture. His 1958 production of I Want to Live! starred Susan Hayward in an anti-capital punishment film that is one of the more highly regarded films on the subject. Hayward won her only Oscar for her role in the film. In 1963, Wanger was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture for his production of Cleopatra. In May 1966, Wanger received the Commendation of the Order of Merit, Italy's third-highest honor, from Consul General Alvaro v. Bettrani, "for your friendship and cooperation with the Italian government in all phases of the motion picture industry." Wanger died, aged 74, in New York City. This hand signed item is 100% original and authentic. Furthermore, this item DOES NOT INCLUDE a PSA/DNA or JSA authentication. This item can be returned within 90 days for a full refund with proof that the autograph did not pass from a legitimate certification company like PSA/DNA. If requested, this item will be accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity issued by our eBay company. We stand behind our COA. The Movie Wizard specializes in rare and collectible movie scripts. Our scripts are genuine, authentic and screen used. We also carry movie props from no genre in particular. Furthermore, all of our items that are not props or scripts can be found in our Other Memorabilia category. We do not sell reproductions or fakes. • PLEASE VIEW THE PICTURES CAREFULLY • THIS IS BEING SOLD FROM ONE COLLECTOR TO ANOTHER. • THIS IS BEING SOLD AS MOVIE MEMORABILIA ONLY, MEANING NO RIGHTS ARE GIVEN OR IMPLIED. • PLEASE message me if you have any questions BEFORE BIDDING, Thanks. We have one of the largest collections of original movie screenplays in the world. We also carry scripts used in Television, Broadway, Radio and other forms of entertainment. Every script that we own was hand-picked one at a time over the many years of which we have been collecting. All of the scripts that we own are original and we do not buy or sell any reproductions or fakes. A lot of people, new to collecting, are confused about the word "Original." In terms of movie scripts, the term "Original" means that it was used by the production company in the early stages of production or that it was issued out to the cast and crew members during filming, and used at the time of production. Any scripts printed or used in any fashion after filming has completed are known as either a reproduction or a post-production script. These two types of scripts are much less valuable and desirable. All of our scripts are "Original." • An original movie script has a lot of character in the item itself and every one of them is different in some way or another. There is usually only one script given to each crew member during production, however, sometimes they do get more than one. This makes original movie scripts very desirable because of how scarce they are. Any changes made to the screenplay during production are known as revisions and these revision pages are inserted into that one script that was issued out to them. For example, if we are talking about a low-budget film with a small cast and only a few crew members, there are actually only a small number of scripts in existence around the world for that film. This aspect of collecting makes it fun but also difficult because there may be a certain writer or director that you love to collect and there may only be a handful of movie scripts that still exist from that specific film that you are looking for. We have some of the rarest movie scripts in the world. Each film project has a different total number of scripts that are issued. The older a film is you also have to figure in the fact that a lot of the original movie scripts have been thrown out or destroyed over time. We do our best to provide the widest selection of original movie scripts in the world. Whatever actor, producer, director, writer or specific film department you are looking for, we probably have a movie script related to the person you are looking for in some form or fashion. We are constantly adding new movie scripts to our eBay store as often as we can. Please, be patient and really go through all of the listings that we have, and I am sure that you will find something that you love. I know that there are a lot of items to search through, but there is definitely something for you. THIS IS IMPORTANT. When searching for an item in our eBay store, you can either search the "title of the movie" or the "writer's name" from that movie for best results. Furthermore, there is a small box that says "Include Description" which is underneath of the large eBay search box. Once you check off this little box it will allow you to search for a specific word that is contained in any of our listings' actual description. Most of our listings DO NOT include the Actor's name anywhere in the title line or description, so please, do your research beforehand to see what film titles you are looking for from a specific Actor, or Writer, but be sure to search for the "movie title" when looking through our eBay listings. Another search option is to click on my eBay store logo which will bring you to my eBay store page. Here all of the original movie scripts will be categorized by decade, which will help you to narrow down what you are looking for by the year it was made.

Price: 525 USD

Location: Van Nuys, California

End Time: 2025-01-01T14:02:19.000Z

Shipping Cost: 0 USD